Top 10 Ways to avoid Facebook Scams and Spams

Facebook is one of the world’s largest websites with over 900 million active users globally. This makes it a hub of various users and the huge amount of content they share over the internet. With popularity lies safety and so far Facebook’s safety has been largely acknowledged. But, safety resides not just in the hands of facebook.com but also on us, the users as there are numerous scams on Facebook which imply various techniques to in a way ‘hack’ your account and compromise the security of your Facebook account. Following are top 10 Facebook scams one Must Avoid :

10. “Fake ‘Team Facebook’ e-mails”

You might often get emails saying that “You have a personal message on Facebook from your friend.” BEWARE! This is a very common scam to ‘hack’ your Facebook account as such mails are never sent by Facebook and they redirect you to links that are totally unauthentic and intended to steal your account from yourself.

9. “Pimp your Facebook profile”

There are times when you get posts on your wall or personal messages saying that you can now modify your Facebook profile as per your wish or say change the standard blue color of the Facebook’s pages. Well, this is another scam which does nothing but replicates itself by fraudulently gaining access from the user to post on wall on behalf of the user and next moment you see that there is the same post on your friends’ walls which appears to be posted by you!!

Note: Facebook has provided no technique to modify the colors or appearance of your profile other than the pre-specified stuff.

8. “LOL. Look at this video I found of you!“

This is a technique to inject potentially very harmful virus into you system. How it works is when you click on the link thinking that there was actually a video of you, it shows you an error message that you need to download an upgraded version of your video player and as you click on the given link, it starts its foul play. It secretly downloads malicious files on your system and harms it to a great extent.

A good antivirus or Firewall can trace this virus and stop the harmful files from being downloaded.

7. “See who viewed your profile !!!”

This is a technique by which your friends gets spammed to a large extent. You often receive offers saying “See who viewed your profile” and as you click on the link it takes you through a few steps in which it asks you to paste certain link on a few of your friends’ walls and the fact is that no such method exists by which you can see who viewed your profile on Facebook . This is just another publicity, spamming and ad-spamming stunt. Facebook will never let you do this, and you should not install apps claiming to do so.

6. “Your friend just answered a question about you!”

Yet another bug-app on Facebook that makes users believe that his/her friend is answering questions about him/her. Well, no one answers questions and this scam pulls users to gain certain access over their account. Also, it lets you answer questions about friends of yours, i.e. it has access to all your friend contacts which is not a favored thing by most of us.

5. “Wow! Facebook Now has its DISLIKE Button, Get It NOW !!!”

Well, Facebook never had and most probably will never have a dislike button. This scam is for the ‘dislike’ enthusiasts on FB and has been quite famous for a long time. It asks you to follow up a few steps to get the so-called ‘dislike button’ and you end up with your account being hacked! And of course, you never get a DISLIKE button on Facebook !

4. “Get free Facebook credits”

The quick and easy way to get items in your favorite games and apps on Facebook is by using Facebook credits which one has to purchase on Facebook. Well, scammers have found a new way to cheat the users by faking ads of free Facebook Credits. Honestly, you never get a single penny for free and if you click on these links, your account is simply being compromised and you might be facing a serious identity theft issue.

3. “Apple distributing the all new iPhone 5, get yours NOW !!”

Electronics giant Apple Inc. has made quite a stir in the market by releasing its all new iPhone 5. Well, it seems like fakers have created a bigger stir on Facebook pretending to distribute free iPhone 5 all around. This is yet another scam as Apple has not planned to simply ‘give-away’ its great innovation and its devices just like that !

2. “Find out who you have chatted the most with”

This is something even I got trapped into. Recently, I got this post saying that I have chatted with someone this many times and this person is now my Best Facebook Chat Friend. LOL ! I hardly seem to know this person and now such scams are becoming quite popular on Facebook. These scams aim at identity threats and target the users for silly stuffs.

1. “Yippee! I just got a recharge of ₹ 500, try it Friends! “

This one has been the most popular scam on Facebook so far. Who doesn’t need a free recharge, that too 500 bucks! Guys, there is no such thing as free recharge and this scam aims at various ways to target your facebook account or your privacy. Moreover, it spams your friends’ walls and inbox and also has the capability to get into your account and make certain changes which you would never like. If you see any such ads like free recharge, or free talk time, etc never go for them. They are simple tricks which you might fall prey for and get cheated

To sum up, as said earlier, safety of our Facebook account lies in our own hands and one small mistake of ours can lead to great mishaps and consequences. It is always advised to take a good look over irrelevant links before just clicking them and always prefer to keep the countermeasures handy with them to deal with such frauds, if they get into one. There are certain tips one must keep in mind, top 10 tips are :

Don’t be in a hurry to click.

Be a keen observer.

Always look for your address bar and the address it shows.

Make sure to use/surf only authentic websites.

Never give any personal detail to any unreliable sources.

Have a good antivirus installed in your system.

Keep yourself updated with the frauds and scams happening around you.

Don’t make a lot of unknown friends on Facebook, and if you do then don’t trust them so easily.

Keep your system Firewall up to date

Beware! There are a lot of fakers and hackers around, be safe..enjoy Facebook!

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Facebook is one of the world's largest websites with over 900 million active users globally. This makes it a hub of various users and the huge amount of content they share over the internet. With popularity lies safety and so far Facebook's safety has been largely acknowledged. But, safety resides not just in the hands of facebook.com but also on